It's beta time!

This is going to be a very short Kickstarter update because we want you all to try the beta and not spend time reading or watching movies ;)

The beta is live!

First of all: as promised the beta is now on Steam Early Access. Grab your keys from the Larian Vault, and go try it out. The game isn’t finished yet; we still have a lot of balancing, bugfixing and tweaking on our plate, but it’s a big step up from the alpha and there’s plenty of new stuff for you to discover.

As per usual, we’re eager to hear your feedback and our excel sheets are at the ready to tweak and balance the millions of stats that define your RPG experience behind the scenes.

If you’re curious what’s in the beta and don’t have the time to discover everything all on your own, there are over 400 improvements and a host of new features:

28 exciting new talents, including fun things like the Lone Wolf perk, which gives an avatar super abilities, but makes it impossible for him or her to hire a companion(s)

More than 60 new skills, allowing for a new brand of synergies, such as combining Invisibility with Pickpocketing

A new Witchcraft skilltree that can be combined with other skills to deadly effect
• New areas to explore, new foes to fight, new items to find & new secrets to discover

A brand newcharacter creation screen with new presets such as Shadowblade and Wayfarer, and an enormous amount of customisation options.

More environmental interactions – you can smash or burn doors, pickpocket characters & use staffs to electrify pools of water. Or how about burning wooden chests to get the loot inside?

Improved AI, user interface, graphics, loading times, performance and stability mean playing Divinity: Original Sin has never been this smooth

A truckload of new sound effects & music tracks

If you want to see the full list and read all the gory details, go check out the full changelist.

Share the new trailer!

Thomas, our resident video guru, managed to capture plenty of gameplay in a mere minute and a half of video. We think it will touch the soul of lots of RPG lovers out there - its that cool!

Now we need to spread it, and that’s something you can help us with. We’re sure there’s plenty of people out there who want to play Divinity: Original Sin but who don’t know about the game yet. Let them know! It's 1:30 mins of their time that may change their gaming lives.

Can’t play the beta but want to see what’s new and the trailer is too short?

Then you may want to check out the Twitch session David & Swen did. They spent a few hours answering questions and showing off features in the beta last Monday. That's a lot of talk for surprisingly little walk :)

A transcript of the answers they gave is available here. (Thanks for that, Stabbey!)

What’s coming?

Now that we’re in beta, you may be wondering what’s coming. In this video message Swen explains what type of development work we’ll still be doing between now and release (i.e. a lot!).

Shout out!

Dragon Fin Soup is already funded but has a sheep pet quest as a stretch goal. Honestly, we can’t understand how they didn’t blast through that goal already! Weresheep unite!

@Dan Sanders
You should have access to the alpha and beta on Steam. Check your Larian Vault account for your keys. :)
Larian decided after the kickstarter campaign that every backer who at least backed for a copy of the game should have access.

I backed the game at the $25 dollar level. Can anyone confirm that the only thing I am to receive is the finished product and no beta keys? I know what the description says but now that it's on steam early access I want to be sure.

@Bastien Durel
No. Trying to maintain saved game compatibility would make make bugfixing needlessly complicated, even if there were no changes between versions that would directly cause problems (items removed, spells changed, etc).

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@SteveW / Arturo J. Puentes Castellanos
The Linux version will follow after the Mac version.

@ascrounch
Log into your Larian vault account and click on "D:OS Kickstarter" with the small green kickstarter sign. There you should find your key.
And make sure that your e-mail address for the Vault is the same as the one you use here for kickstarter. If not you have to contact Larian directly so that they can link your pledge to your Larian vault account.